Why Emily Blunt made her Mary Poppins 'a bit raunchy'

She's not Julie Andrews, and she knows it

All hesitation about the newest Disney reboot appears to have been thrown out the window, and the star-studded 'Mary Poppins Returns' promises all the nostalgia, magic, cartoons, adventure, and music of its 1964 companion. There may, however, be one or two notable differences along the way.

Emily Blunt had quite large shoes to fill when she signed on to play such a beloved character, once embodied by the even more beloved Julie Andrews. But instead of studying Poppins and Andrews closely, Blunt kept a very careful distance.

According to the Telegraph, the 35-year-old actress admitted that she hadn't seen the original since she was about "six or seven" and chose not to refresh her memory. Her logic was that "if I was going to take her on, I had to take a big swing, and not impersonate or compromise."

Instead, Blunt took to the books. "She’s quite different in the books–terribly rude, vain, and batty, which made me laugh so much," she explained. Blunt and director Rob Marshall spoke about how Mary Poppins actually came off as an "adrenaline junkie" who needed those crazy adventures as an outlet.

On one of those adventures, Poppins apparently performs a music hall number whose lyrics are laden with innuendos. “It’s a raunchy number!” Blunt says outright. “Who’s to say she doesn’t like to get a bit raunchy now and then? She’s a bit sassy, Mary Poppins. She loves flirting with labourers.”

In the song, she's reportedly talking about people taking their clothes off and having sex—something you probably don't associate with your old memories of Mary Poppins! Blunt performs it in a thick Cockney accent, to make Poppins and Jack sound like they're "of the same world."

Don't let this addition of sass and sexiness deter you, however, as the sequel has already proven to make viewers emotional, including Blunt's husband, John Krasinski, and her father, who apparently "cried hard" when he watched it.

The actress shared her theory on why the film is making people so tearful with InStyle, explaining "I think sometimes childlike wonder and a sense of joy are sometimes seen as trivial things, and maybe people don’t revisit those parts of themselves very often."

Blunt descends into theatres via kite string on December 19, 2018, and her raunchy take on the classic is surely something you don't want to miss.